1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of communications, and more particularly, the present invention relates to a fast locking mechanism for channelized ultrawide-band communications.
2. Related Art
Conventional transceivers operating with narrow band signals typically use the same antenna to transmit and receive signals. The transmit and receive signals are usually the same or very close in frequency. Switching between the transmit and receive mode can be done at very high rates, depending on the density of each packet of data.
Full duplex operation has traditionally been accomplished by either frequency domain or a time domain multiple access (FDMA or TDMA). In order to isolate the transmitter and receiver, FDMA uses frequency filters and hybrids, while TDMA uses a duty cycle scheme in which the transmitter and receiver alternate operation.
An example of an FDMA full duplex voice communication system is an amateur radio transceiver that operates with different transmit and receive frequencies. For example, the separated frequencies could be 144 Mhz and 436 Mhz. In such a system, the antennas are usually different, and filters must be used in the receiver to eliminate transmitter noise from the adjacent transmit antenna. Otherwise, the receiver could easily be overloaded by its own transmitter.
Impulse radio technology, on the other hand, is ultrawide-band by definition. The original descriptions of impulse radio may be found in a number of United States Patents by the present inventor. Three of these are U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,641,317 (issued Feb. 3, 1987), 4,813,057 (issued Mar. 14, 1989) and 4,979,186 (issued Dec. 18, 1990). Because of the ultrawide-band characteristics of impulse radio, it is difficult to modify impulse radio systems to use conventional duplex schemes.
In order to achieve full duplex in impulse radio technology, separate transmit and receive antennas are required for hand-held transceiver applications. This is because the receiver can not be disconnected from the antenna fast enough to permit transmission using the same antenna. Therefore, the size of the impulse radio antennas must be relatively small.
An impulse radio system with many users communicating with one another requires that they all have the same size antennas. In addition, for impulse radio communications in the same bandwidth, it is assumed that the transmit and receive antennas are the same size as well. These constraints complicate the implementation of full duplex in impulse radio technology, because both the transmitter and receiver are usually operated in the same ultrawide frequency bandwidth.
Impulse radio technology permits operation at rates so high that there is no time for the signal to reach the intended receiver before the next pulse is transmitted. This situation causes several pulses to be present in the space between the two transceiver units. When there is motion between them such as in mobile communications, there occurs the unavoidable condition wherein the transmitter and receiver must operate simultaneously.
In order to operate in full duplex mode in a mobile environment, the transmitter and receiver would be required to operate simultaneously whenever the distance separating them increases or decreases by a multiple of C/R, where C is the speed of light and R is the repetition rate. For example, if R=1 million pulses per second, these zones would be about 300 meters, and so on. Although full duplex mode of operation is very desirable, this effect makes it unpractical to do so.
In order for pairs of users to simultaneously communicate independently, some form of channelization is required to avoid cross-talk. One channelization technique is to use different pulse repetition rates for each pair of transceivers that communicate in proximity of other transceivers. This technique, however, has limited channel capacity as limited discrete pulse repetition rates are actually available for impulse radio communications and may interfere with other communication services.
A second approach to channelization is to use different pseudo random noise (PN) codes. According to this technique, the number of channels for impulse radio communications is only limited by the complexity and uniqueness of orthogonal (i.e., non-interfering) PN codes. The inherent complexity of using PN codes for channelization is that the codes must be identifiable (i.e., acquisitioned and locked) and decoded in a short period of time for full duplex communications to be realized.
What is needed for this PN coded approach is an acquisition mechanism that is applicable to impulse radio technology, and that permits fast locking of impulse radio signals.